Are the Darwin Awards offensive as it makes fun of people who died or it is not as it is treating idiots as they deserve to be?
The Darwin Awards are awesome.
Maybe if they sent some sort of wreath and trophy to the funeral, or maybe invited families of the deceased to an award ceremony.
But the way it is, no. The people are dead, they died because of doing something stupid, and other people recognised that stupidity and found it grimly amusing (or even hilarious). Making fun of the dead is nothing new, and while you shouldn’t do it to the bereaved family’s faces, I don’t see it as offensive.
Honestly I think it’s kind of offensive. We ALL do stupid things in our lives. If one of my stupid mistakes gets me killed, I’d rather not be made fun of.
One Darwin Award recipient was the mother of a Peace Corps Volunteer in Cameroon. The volunteer’s mother was killed by an elephant on a vacation. Cameroonian safaris are not luxury affairs. Basically you sit in the back of an open truck looking for animals. During an elephant siting, the safari goers stepped off of the vehicle. The guide yelled at them to return, but the mother did not speak French. Suddenly the elephants charged, and the mother was picked up by an elephant and killed, right in front of her daughter.
After the funeral, the daughter returned to Cameroon to finish her service.
That daughter is a hero. Imagine watching your own mother get killed in a faraway land, and then being willing to return to that place to do what you set out to do.
Nobody should be laughing at that.
I think they’re mildly offensive. Very few of the people whose deaths you chuckle at are doing anything that merits death. Usually they’re just being stupid, and deserve nothing more than a smack on the head. As even sven points out most of the people who’s deaths the Awards find so hilarious have relatives who loved them and who have to grieve and reconstruct their lives.
Also, what does Darwin have to do with anything? Many of the dead people have already passed on their genes, for one thing.
I seem to recall that some of them are a stretch anyway; deliberately excluding details that might make the deaths seem less idiotic. No cites, I’ll try to research this later.
The main reason I don’t like the Darwin awards, personally, is that the theory of evolution is one of the most popularly misunderstood theories of all time*, and these awards kinda reinforce a common misconception.
I don’t think evolution is a concept that can easily be, or should be, applied to modern humans.
I’d prefer just a generic “stupid deaths” award. Why should deadbeat dads automatically be winners in modern society?
- I had a conversation recently where someone claimed that the increasing pass rate for A level exams is proof that we’re evolving to become more stupid
Ok, I’ll add by saying that the idea of the Darwin Awards is not offensive.
If anyone misrepresents a story to make the hero look more, or just stupid, adds or omits details or fails to give existing exonerating circumstances, then it’s stupid and offensive.
The example given by even sven is unfortunate and not funny.
But the story from here
2007 Darwin Award: Whac-A-Mole,
of a man electrocuting himself by basically electrifying his own back-yard is, in my opinion, funny. That goes beyond a simple lack of judgement or unfortunate set of circumstances.
This is a debate? Hell no they aren’t. They’re funny and are the epitome of natural selection.
It’s actually a complete misunderstanding of natural selection. It rivals creationism in its ignorance.
They’re so desperate to find new funny deaths that they often report things that are just sad.
For example, here’s a storyabout a man who was accidentally crushed by a concrete slab when he was trying to demolish a shed. I’m not sure why his actions are supposed to be particularly amusing. It’s just tragic and grisly. You might as well entertain yourself by chuckling at pictures of car crashes.
Yeah, the stories where someone does something outrageously dumb and pays the consequences are funny. But the Darwin Awards should be a little pickier about what they feature. I stopped checking the site after I realized that it depressed me instead of entertaining me.
Now Fail Blog, that’s funny!
It’s funny that this should come up. I hadn’t read the Darwin Awards in years, until about 2 days ago. I saw this story there and decided it was kind of offensive, or at least very sad.
Now first of all, we have to assume this story is true. It only lists him as “Robert” and the supposed link to his obituary doesn’t work.
What bothered me in the story is that he was married. I’m married. I know how guys can talk their wives into letting them do really stupid things if they’re passionate enough about it. His wife probably thought this was a horrible idea, but eventually relented because she didn’t want to “crush his dreams.” I won’t elaborate any more because I’m getting sad again just writing about it. If you’re married you probably know exactly what I’m talking about.
She probably feels incredibly guilty. And if his death that she’ll have to live with forever wasn’t enough, now he’s getting made fun of on a website and people all over the world are laughing at him.
So it’s at least very sad, and probably offensive.
I’d say yes, but really that seems like a good thing. Idiotic acts should be made fun of. It’s a sort of negative peer pressure.
Hmmm…some of them are. Some of them, like the guy who electrocuted himself, however, are hysterical.
I don’t want to go all “oh, death is a part of life, yada yada yada”, but well, it is. And sometimes, you just gotta laugh. Sometimes, it IS funny.
(BTW, did they ever determine if the guy who chainsawed his own head off was true? Because that was one of my favorites)
It depends on the story.
Those guys that died because they climbed into a tiger enclosure to put a flower necklace on the tiger? That’s hilarious.
The Darwin Awards are boring. In actuality, they should call it “The Alcoholics Anonymous Follies.”
Offensive to whom? Offensive to some generic personalisation of the public morality or did you have some specific person in mind? Me perhaps? And what is it with “offensive” these days? Is it supposed to be ultra bad if something is offensive to somebody else? Darwin Awards are not offensive because I like to make fun of stupid people. Or just about any kind of people really. And if there are sex, gore and violence so much the better. Of perhaps I like it because it is offensive. If I like it then it must be good. Ergo is offensive good.
I think it depends. The elephant story is just sad and the only people likely to find it amusing are sancimonious little pricks who find all human misfortune amusing and who probably have never left their home town.
OTOH, some dumbass dying through their own stupidity by strapping a JATO rocket to their Chevy and then blowing up in the desert (which was an urban legend anyway IIRC) is pretty darn funny.
That would be the epitome of a Darwin award. The guy was going to rocket off of Niagara Falls from a jet ski and parachute down? It’s a classic series of “stupid” wrapped in a bow. They’re all sad but it’s the poorly thought out venture that gets the nomination.
If I found the right one posted by even sven (halfway down the page) then that doesn’t really qualify. Stepping out of a tour bus to take a picture is too little info to qualify. Walking up and smacking one in the balls to get it to move next to something picturesque would qualify.
You don’t know his qualifications. He could’ve been a stunt-man who’d done dozens of similar things and had it all worked out pretty well. One of the comments said he was doing it to raise awareness for the plight of the homeless. If true, he sounds like a good, selfless guy. And even if it wasn’t so well thought-out, I still feel bad for his survivors. Contrary to truck-stop keychain wisdom, I do not believe stupidity, in and of itself, should be deadly.
I was under the impression the Darwin Awards- even in their heyday- were still largely Urban Legends, “based on actual events from other stories”, taken out of context, or of dubious authenticity, anyway.
I’m not sure I’d call them “Offensive”, but I would say they should be taken with a grain of salt.